Antonina miliukova biography books

I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism. Home Contact Privacy. Her Memoirs After his death she wrote or dictated her reminiscence about their marriage. I began to desire death passionately, greedily. Death seemed to me the only way out, but violent death was out of the question.

I must tell you that I am deeply attached to some of my relatives, i. I know that, having decided to commit suicide and having put this thought into execution, I would strike a fatal blow to these relatives. There are many other people, some close friends, whose love and friendship bind me inseparably to life. Besides, I have a weakness if it can be called so for loving life, loving my work, and loving my future successes.

Finally, I have not yet said all that I can and want to say before it is time for me to move into eternity. Irina Okhalova. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Yuri Davidov, the composer's nephew and close friend, in the book Notes on P. Tchaikovskypublished inwrote only a cryptic phrase about the events of September "In the life of Pyotr Ilyich this marriage turned into an internal catastrophe, from which he almost died".

In this document, Tchaikovsky gave three reasons for his teaching quitting: [ 46 ]. So, in spite of myself, I divided ten years of my life between my teaching duties and my favorite compositional work, which filled the rest of my time. Eventually, this clear division [of time] stopped working. My Moscow friends, both collectively and individually, were eagerly consuming strong drinks, and since I myself had always had an obvious inclination toward the fruit of the vineI soon [began] to take a more than permissible part in drinking parties, which I had previously avoided.

My tireless activity, combined with such Bacchic entertainments, could not but have a most disastrous effect on my nervous system: in I fell ill and was forced to resign my position at the Conservatory for some time. Polina Weidman. Usually, the possibility of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's attempted suicide is connected by researchers with the beginning of his life with Antonina Miliukova.

To prove the latter motive, Poznansky quotes words from the composer's letter that, in his opinion, were the main virtue of the future wife — Miliukova was in love with him "like a cat". Of the composer's numerous relatives, only his brother Anatoly was invited to the ceremony. Modest Tchaikovsky noted that Antonina Milukova, as his antonina miliukova biography books put it, "acted honestly and sincerely", without consciously deceiving him in anything, and "unwillingly and unconsciously" was the cause of her husband's deepest and strongest misfortune.

For his part, the composer also acted "honestly, openly, without deceiving her in anything". Both of them, after their marriage, "saw with horror A complete rupture was the only means not only for the further well-being of both, but also for saving the life of Pyotr Ilyich". She claimed that Milukova "suffered from an obvious sexual psychosis", citing as confirmation the fact of her twelve-year stay and death in a psychiatric hospital.

In his opinion, Tchaikovsky did not at first perceive "her mannerisms as symptoms of mental illness" and only realized the problem when he saw Antonina speak at an evening organized by Pyotr Jurgenson. Predictably, she was uncomfortable, and her husband kept interrupting [her conversations with friends] to finish what she might have wanted to say but dared not".

The Soviet local historian and biographer Vladimir Kholodkovsky added to the family problem other, in his opinion, no less important causes of the composer's inner crisis: acute criticism of Tchaikovsky's works in the Russian media [ 59 ] and the need to destroy "life circumstances" and break with "environment" in order to gain creative freedom.

Such a situation, from the researcher's point of view, was already present in Tchaikovsky's life inwhen he rejected a career as an official and chose the doubtful, from the point of view of public opinioncareer of a musician. Each time this situation demanded from the composer "an enormous expenditure of vital forces". Andrei Budyakovskya Soviet musicologist, senior researcher at the Academy of Art History, and chairman of the Theory and Criticism Section of the Union of Composers of the USSRbelieved that in"in addition to his [the composer's] will and desire, a young life was lost in similar situations.

Budyakovsky argued: "Some available materials give reason to conclude that there was a serious nervous shock in Tchaikovsky's life at the end of Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to determine its content more precisely". According to the researcher, Tchaikovsky was afraid that if he rejected Milukova, the tragedy would repeat itself.

Nadezhda Tumanina, a student of art history and the author of a two-volume book on the composer's life and work, believed that the suicide attempt was connected with Tchaikovsky's nervous illness. According to her, it had been developing for a long time and ended in a crisis. The crisis provoked a rash step—marriage with Antonina Miliukova, "a young woman who turned out to be shallow and undeveloped, with bourgeois tastes, besides being mentally unstable, accelerated the onset of the crisis.

The composer left his work at the Moscow Conservatory and went abroad. There, Tchaikovsky began to recover. The "cure" for him was working on the Fourth Symphony and the opera Eugene Onegin. He finally overcame the crisis only in February Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, was similar. She wrote: "the crisis had been brewing for a long time, from within and gradually," and "it would be completely wrong to think that Alexander Poznanskya graduate of the Faculty of History at Saint Petersburg State University and an associate of Yale Universityinterpreted the reasons for the composer's alleged antonina miliukova biography books as being related to his homosexual attraction.

According to the researcher, until the mids, Tchaikovsky, "as it happens with many people of this characteristic, did not allow himself to think that his inclination was insurmountable". Poznansky thus reconstructed the composer's train of thought: " I will indulge my inclination as long as it is possible; when it is necessary to stop categorically, I will make an effort over myself, renounce my habits and live like all other normal people".

He did not perceive it as an anomaly. Tchaikovsky characterized "public opinion" as "various despicable creatures" and did not want to pay attention to it. It was only during his brief marital relationship with Antonina Miliukova that Tchaikovsky realized that he "belongs by nature to a rare type of homosexual exceptional, and any kind of collision with a woman is impossible for him".

Antonina miliukova biography books: Brown, David. · Holden,

He was accompanied by his servant, Alexei Sofronov. On the way, he stopped at Kamianka on the estate of his relatives, the Davydovs, and there he decided to refuse to continue the journey and at the same time not to return to Moscow. Poznansky believed that this decision, unexpected by those close to him, was due to the fact that "he had returned to his 'natural impulses,' having fallen in love with the teenage lackey Eustafy".

While his wife derived pleasure from their life together, the composer fell into a state of despair as time passed after the marriage. It was only then that he began to realize that the plan to strengthen his social position and the stability of his personal life through marriage had failed; moreover, there was a danger not only of exposing the composer's own intimate desires but also of disgracing his family.

He fell into a state of hopelessness and longed to return to his creative work and his usual stable life.

Antonina miliukova biography books: In the opening chapters he approaches

In his two-volume biography of Tchaikovsky, Poznansky drew attention to the dramatic change in the composer's attitude toward Miliukova during the short second period of their life together September In letters to his brothers during this period, he first used the name "Antonina" to refer to his wife, then "that lady," "wife," later switching to the expressions "a well-known person," "a female creature bearing my name," and finally "a disgusting creation of nature," "an abomination," "an abomination" which is how he would refer to her after"as if it were her own name""a bitch".

Poznansky assumed that the cause must have been some event related to a change in Antonina's tactics and strategy toward her husband. From his point of view, she decided during his absence that it was time for Tchaikovsky to start fulfilling his marital duties, and she began actively using " coquetryall sorts of feminine tricks, entreaties and demands" in the struggle to achieve this goal, eventually going on the "decisive offensive.

Galina Poberezhnaya, doctor of art history, professor, and pioneer of music therapypointed out that women played a very important role in the life and ideas of the composer. She was the embodiment of: A the maternal beginning the researcher emphasized the great role of lullabies in Tchaikovsky's works; for example, in the opera MazepaMaria's lullaby is addressed not to a child but to an adult—her lover and B "a strong dramatic personality" in his operas, the female image "leads the action" or "serves as its center".

He did not hide from Miliukova his lack of attraction to her and his desire to build family relations on a rational basis. In addition, Miliukova was not only undistinguished by talent but was indifferent to music, even with a musical education. At the same time, the researcher argues that the crisis of divided the composer's life and work into two different periods, opening the period of "brilliant" works.

A Brief Biographical Sketch, there is no mention of the suicide attempt. He recounted in detail Modest Tchaikovsky's version of events. The Soviet musicologist Galina Pribegina also ignored Kashkin's message completely and did not mention anything about it in her biography of the composer published in The musicologist and biographer of Tchaikovsky, Joseph Kunin, who wrote about the events in Moscow in a book published in in the series The Lives of Remarkable Peopleavoided asking the question of the suicide: "Unbearable antonina miliukova biography books tormented him, death seemed to be a liberation, consciousness began to be confused.

For the most part, these were generals, nephews of prominent bankers, well-known artists, even members of the imperial family. Her mother would especially catch her in this The third topic of her tireless chatter was her stories of life at boarding school. There was no end to them. He also added, "Desiring to know what maternal instincts she had, I asked her once whether she liked children.

I received in reply: 'Yes, when they are clever. Things changed when Tchaikovsky returned to Moscow from Kamenka. Antonina demanded that he fulfill his marital duties in the bedroom. Tchaikovsky considered this change an act of betrayal. It sent him into despair and severely wounded his pride. In later years, [ when? Though she outlived Tchaikovsky by 24 years, she spent the last 20 of them in an insane asylum.

She died on 1 March in Moscow at age After his death she wrote or dictated her reminiscence about their marriage.

Antonina miliukova biography books: Antonina Milyukova was born into

While they were printed in and reprinted inthey were never widely known. According to Tchaikovsky scholar Alexander Poznansky, she comes across in them as naive, superficial and not very intelligent. On the contrary, the genuineness of the intonation, the idiosyncratic style, and the wealth of detail all attest its authenticity.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Wife of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — For the film, see Tchaikovsky's Wife. In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customsthe patronymic is Ivanovna and the family name is Miliukova.

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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in Tchaikovsky and His World.

Leslie Kearney.